His performance in a trial match earned Ted Salway, a young gardener from Nursling, amateur terms and Echo approval, as

“a rough diamond with plenty of potential.”

It took him a while to develop, however. Even when he signed pro, two years on, he remained a regular in the Reserves, representing Hampshire along the way. He eventually got his chance to test his pace and energy in the first-team, across various positions, in 1912-13, yet spent the next two seasons in the Reserves, with but an occasional appearance in the Southern Alliance side.

After a dozen games in friendlies or war-time competition at the start of the 1915-16 season, he joined up. Sent to the Western Front with the Royal Horse Artillery in 1916, he lost an eye and his right forearm at Ypres in July 1917 (see scrapbook section) and was invalided home. He recovered well enough to cycle from Nursling to the docks, each day, to work as a flagsman. But the Southampton directors had fallen somewhat short of Lloyd George’s post-war promise of “a land fit for heroes to live in,” when they judged that Gunner Salway’s heroic losses merited a benefit match between Southampton’s Reserves and Portsmouth Amateurs. In 1939 he was registered as a “docks crossing keeper”.